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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22669585">Smirks and Cigarettes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashenpages/pseuds/ashenpages'>ashenpages</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Epistolary, M/M, kind of</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:14:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,883</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22669585</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashenpages/pseuds/ashenpages</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Hux has Ren light his cigarette, it isn’t planned or discussed, or even a sensible time to be smoking.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armitage Hux/Ben Solo, Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>84</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Smirks and Cigarettes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This work wouldn't have happened if my partner and I hadn't seen <a href="https://arstyrannus.tumblr.com/post/190316534570/vintage-ads-are-my-favourite-ads">this gorgeous piece of artwork</a> by arstyrannus.</p><p>We just started coming up with all the other ways Hux might have lit a cigarette, and then I had a fic on my hands. Number Twelve on this list directly parallels arstyrannus's piece.</p><p>Please go support them by reblogging and sharing their artwork!</p><p>Also, smoking can cause cancer and kill you and all that. Be responsible and don't do drugs, kids!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A list of the ways in which Armitage Hux lit his last pack of cigarettes:</p><p>1.	Against Ren’s lightsaber, before battle, while bored. Quick, messy, and dangerous. One moment, Ren’s gesturing over the battlefield, his lightsaber held horizontally and pointing out towards the forest they’ll invade. The next, Hux whips out a cigarette, presses it to the long shaft of red light, and takes a drag. He would rather have his head cut off than continue listening to Ren go on about how he’s in charge, even though these forces were ones Hux had trained himself. Ren shuts his mouth with a quick snap as the cigarette crackles to life between Hux’s fingers. Hux breathes out smoke with a sigh of relief, blissful nicotine and silence. Thank goodness something could shut Ren up.</p><p>2.	After battle, with the hot barrel of his blaster. This time, he needs a good smoke, and his blaster’s already in his hand. Saves him the trouble of having to juggle it while reaching for his lighter. Even better, he knows it looks sexy when he lights cigarettes this way. He watches Ren swallow and smirks around the end of his cigarette as he returns to their ship.</p><p>3.	With the barrel of Phasma’s blaster after she’s finished executing traitors of the First Order. Ren watches him from across the hall. Phasma makes a low sound of amusement. She never did approve of Hux’s smoking, his disdain for lighters, or his goading of their resident Force user.</p><p>4.	With his lighter, during a board meeting. He’s irritated enough that he wants to seem flippant, and since his lighter is the only thing he has with him to convey that, it’s what he uses. He has to take off a glove to do it, or risk burning the leather. He flips the cap open with a satisfyingly sharp sound. Ren’s eyes track his hand until the leather is back in place.</p><p>5.	Against the charred remains of a village Ren had ordered destroyed. The houses are still smoking and small tongues of flame lick at the flimsy frames of what’s left of the structures. Hux leans delicately into one and breathes in the smells of charcoal and the arid desert. When he straightens, Ren is so close to him that Hux wonders if Ren’s going to push him into the burning wreckage too. Ren walks away just as suddenly as he appeared, his cape billowing behind him like the restless wave of an ocean this planet has never seen.</p><p>6.	While they’re waiting for instructions, taking cover in ruins while rain pours outside. Hux lost his lighter in a skirmish, and can’t risk firing off his blaster to create a makeshift one. He’d hang around Ren for the inevitable lightsaber tantrum, except that he’s so irritated from nicotine cravings he might be the subject of next said tantrum. He settles for holding the cigarette between his teeth, just to taste it. The end sizzles to life with a flicker of flame. It curls around the tip like it has a mind of its own and extinguishes as soon as Hux breathes in with surprise. He turns to see Ren silhouetted in the doorway, his hand extended gently as if doing one of his many Force tricks. When Hux asks him how he did it, Ren mumbles something about everything for fire already being there, just needing a spark, and then quickly strides away. Hux spends his smoke feeling perplexed by something he doesn’t want to examine too closely.</p><p>7.	On the tip of Ren’s lightsaber, while Ren’s training. Hux interrupts—rightly so, since they have a mission and he isn’t going to stand for Ren making them wait again. Ren holds his pose, sunk deep into a crouch, his saber halting in the air from his swing just as the door slides open. His eyes are on Hux as the door opens, almost like he knew Hux would be there. Those eyes would be enough to paralyze a lesser person, especially undercut by the raw red fire of his saber. Hux steps through the portal and pulls a cigarette from his inner pocket. He leans in slowly and presses the end to the tip of Ren’s lightsaber, his movements slow, deliberate, measured. Ren doesn’t budge, even as Hux blows smoke in his direction. “Put a shirt on and don’t be late,” Hux says before he departs.</p><p>8.	With Ren’s mouth, and his lighter. A knock on his door is the last thing he expects at the late hour he’s working. He’s been toying with the cigarette for the last half hour, trying to convince himself he doesn’t need it. He opens the door, and there’s Ren. He looks awkward and out of place, almost like he doesn’t know what he’s doing there in Hux’s doorway either. “You should sleep,” he says, gesturing to Hux’s desk lamp and the papers strewn about over it. “You think too loudly when you go over paperwork at night.” Hux slides the cigarette between Ren’s lips and flicks out his lighter with a practiced hand. “I have a better idea.” He holds the flame to the tip of the tobacco. “Breathe in.” He inhales the smoke Ren exhales before taking his cigarette back and closing the door.</p><p>9.	With a candle flame kept on some strange quasi-Jedi altar in Ren’s quarters—though Ren would never call it that. Two things lay on the altar: an ornate hair pin in the style of Naboo royalty and a scrap of white fabric the same shade and weight as the type favored by the Resistance’s lead general. Hux wonders momentarily what Ren would look like with his hair twisted up in that pin and his body clad in white instead of black. Ren moves Hux’s cigarette out of the way and kisses him.</p><p>10.	With the tip of Ren’s finger, lying in bed, half-clothed and too lazy to go search for his lighter amongst the clothes scattered on the floor, still where they left them from when they fell into bed. He would have gone without the cigarette entirely if it meant leaving the warmth of Ren’s skin against his, but Ren pulls one out of Hux’s pack with Force puppetry, and then lights it with a touch of his finger. Hux’s eyes slip closed blissfully as he takes a pull and rubs his nose along Ren’s jawline. He feels content. Safe.</p><p>11.	With one of the wooden matches Phasma always seems to have inexplicably on hand whenever she deigns to smoke half a cigar with him in her quarters. She’s a fit woman. She doesn’t indulge in anything often. But Hux might never see her again, and this is a time for last indulgences. He lets the cigarette burn, barely pulling on it as he watches Phasma ready her escape ship, dressed strangely in plain clothes. She lost to the renegade stormtrooper on their own ship, and the First Order doesn’t tolerate such embarrassments. She has to leave, or they’ll be sure she’s gone forever. Either way, she’s lost to him. And he already feels lost without her. She kisses his cheek before she leaves. He holds her longer than he means to. He lets the cigarette burn down as he keeps his eyes on the pin-prick of space where her ship jumped to lightspeed.</p><p>12.	With the crossguard of Ren’s lightsaber, Ren’s wrist pliant in his palm, guided gently by his own hand. It’s a pact. Ren found him out, saw that Hux was passing information to the Resistance. And Ren should kill him. Everything of his training before, and all of his fear of losing control is telling him to kill Hux—Hux can see it in Ren’s stance, in the tilt of the thrumming red saber between them. But he doesn’t. He stands there, looking at Hux with pleading eyes. Then he speaks. “If we’re going to take the Order down… If we’re going to win this… We’ll have to do it together.” Hux nods and approaches him. “It will be more believable if we look like enemies,” Hux says. What he means is there’s a higher chance one of them will survive if they aren’t connected. Ren looks away. Hux can see the sorrow in the slant of his neck, the slump of his shoulders. He doesn’t resist as Hux draws out a cigarette and maneuvers him, sealing their pact with the hiss of tobacco against plasma and downcast eyes.</p><p>13.	With the glowing superheated spot on the armor beneath his uniform after Pryde tries to blast him to kingdom come.</p><p>14.	With the spark of a few wires as he hot-wires the electrical systems of the last of Ren’s backup ships. Ren really should stop wrecking them, it’s always been hell on the budget. He reminds himself that’s not his problem anymore and wishes the budget to hell with a petulant flick of his cigarette.</p><p>15.	In the embers of a dying Resistance campfire.</p><p>16.	In the proffered built-in lighter of a familiar orange and white droid. It takes him a moment to understand it’s for him, and he feels sheepish as he kneels to accept. He wonders if this is what forgiveness feels like.</p><p>17.	Off an unexpectedly organic match in the hand of a friend he never thought he’d see again. Even on the eve of war, Hux celebrates Phasma’s return. He hopes she won’t be the last to come back to him.</p><p>18.	Off the still-hot thrusters of a Resistance ship he knows the form and reputation of from stories First Order personnel whispered behind Ren’s back and from the Kessel-run-in-twelve-parsecs legends the Resistance tells around their campfires.</p><p>19.	On conjured sparks in the naked palm of a large gentle hand he’s only seen stripped of gloves in the half-light of Ren’s chambers. He thinks he’s dreaming when he sees Ren following Rey down the gangplank of the Falcon. His throat closes up over the emotional way Ren stoops to hug his mother, like he can’t believe he found his way back to her, and wishes he were small enough to fit against her and be shielded from everything that’s happened. It’s how Hux wants to fit against Ren. Then Ren’s eyes flick up and catch on his, just as intense and consuming as Hux remembers them. Hux’s breath stutters in his throat. Ren’s eyes don’t let go until Hux shuts his own to keep the stars in Ren’s hands from blinding him.</p><p>20.	In the moderate privacy of his Resistance tent, illuminated by the blue light of a lightsaber that belonged to Ren’s grandfather and his uncle and now to him. He lights the cigarette against the blade of the saber, his eyes open and on Ren’s as he sucks heat and life into the last cigarette of the pack he left the First Order with. He smokes it between slow, heavy, gravity-wells of kisses, and can’t be bothered to mind the ash that falls to his bedclothes as he pushes Ren down into them. He kisses Ren again and calls him by his old-new name, the sound of it unfamiliar and fresh on his tongue. It’s a time for beginnings. Maybe he’ll finally quit smoking after this.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you enjoyed this and want to read more, check out more of my work <a href="http://ashenpages.tumblr.com/myfanfiction">here!</a></p><p>You can also find me on <a href="http://ashenpages.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ashenpages">Twitter</a>.</p><p>Please feel free to come by and chat! Always lovely to hearing from fans!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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